


What’s right week days is right Sundays

by middlemarch



Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: Anxiety, Conversation, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Husbands and Wives, Marriage, Post-Canon, Romance, with a kick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 22:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19954045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: “You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”





	What’s right week days is right Sundays

He hadn’t thought she’d fuss over him so much. She mended his shirts herself, though she declared she hated needlework and could have paid to have someone turn the cuffs and collar. She poured his tea an inch from the rim of the cup, stirring in the lump of sugar before she added enough milk to make clouds unfold. She rubbed his sore shoulder with liniment after he wrenched it during a bad delivery, the lamb lost and nearly the ewe, and she propped the pillows around him, a feather fortress, so he’d be comfortable in the night, as comfortable as he could be unable to reach for her hip and feel her settle back against him. The cook never served flummery after the first time he’d left half of it on the plate and the plain apple tart was glazed with honey, stuffed with raisins, when he’d left not a crumb behind. On Sundays, she took her time combing out her chestnut hair before she put it up for church, letting the brush stroke through slowly enough he could always grasp it in his right hand, his left resting on her slender shoulder where her lacy chemise was always slipping down. He could nearly forget how she’d rejected him, direct and practical and offended and proud, with the bountiful evidence of her thoughtful care, her pragmatic tenderness, but he wondered at dawn, when she couldn’t quite wake before him and at night when she fell asleep in his arms, when she paused to make a calculation before writing down what he’d reported in her account book, Why? He asked in a moment of weakness, unless it was bravery to confront her; she was many things, his wife, but she wasn’t a liar.

“Because you belong to me, Gabriel,” Bathsheba said simply.

“A possession, then, like a saddle to be polished,” he said, unable to keep the hurt from the jest.

“Heavens no! Who could possess an independent soul? And yours is the most independent I’ve ever encountered, not that I’ve gone so widely into the world,” she replied, cocking her head like a brown sparrow as she did when she considered something that pleased her. “Because it gives me pleasure to do what you will never ask for, never demand, hardly mention except that you smile at me in that way you have. Am I the greatest fool? Oh dear, I think I must be.”

“No,” he said, taking her in his arms, his shoulder healed, his linen shirt white, untucked, cuffs unbuttoned. He kissed her temple, the apple of her cheek, her throat. “That’s me, for being troubled where there wasn’t any cause, for worrying out of turn.”

“A fine pair we make then,” she said. She laid a hand over his heart, the hand with the gold ring, and gave him the smile he’d spent years watching for, waiting for. “And really, Gabriel—a saddle?” she added, raising an eyebrow.

“Not a fair comparison?”

“Not if you truly consider…going riding,” she said delicately, as if it weren’t the bawdiest allusion she’d ever made. They’d be late for church again, which was perhaps exactly what she’d intended.

**Author's Note:**

> Just some musing on Bathsheba and Gabriel's married life, very much going friends to lovers. The title is from the book but I think the vibe of the vignette is movie-verse. Flummery is a dessert from 17-19th C. England and Ireland, a soft sweet pudding made with starch, beaten eggs, milk and sugar.


End file.
